Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Staunton, July 5 – Russia’s economic
development ministry says that the country’s GDP growth will be approximately
half of one percent lower each year because of projected declines in the number
of workers in Russia in the coming decades, a decline that the ministry says
must be fought by increasing immigration.

But any immigration sufficient to
cover that decline in the size of the working-age cohort will not only
increasingly consist of people who are culturally, linguistically and religiously
dissimilar to the current residents of Russia and accelerate the shifting
balance between Orthodox and Muslims in its population.

Russia could avoid this problem by dramatically
increasing labor productivity, something the government and most experts do not
think is possible, or by driving down mortality rates among working age Russian
males, a step that would be very expensive, or attracting back into the
workforce pensioners, a step with unpredictable political consequences.

As a result, the Russian government,
far sooner than many have predicted, will face a Hobson’s choice between slower
economic growth or even accelerated economic decline and a changing ethnic and
cultural balance that will certainly exacerbate tensions within society by
dramatically increasing the share of Muslims in the population of Russia.

The ministry believes that Russia
can make up for this demographic decline by boosting labor productivity, but Russian
experts and politicians say that this is likely impossible.They are also skeptical about reducing
mortality rates or attracting pensioners back to the workforce (segodnia.ru/content/189343 and
regions.ru/news/2607034/).

If they are right – and they have
recent history on their side – Russia will have to attract a dramatic increase
in the number of immigrants. Most of these will come from Central Asia or the
South Caucasus, and they will be increasingly different from the Russians with
whom they will be working.

Many will no longer speak Russian
fluently if at all. Many will not identify with the Soviet collective of the
past but rather with their own countries. And many will be offended by the
increasing xenophobia among Russians, attitudes that are making these people more
nationalistic and even anti-Russian than would otherwise be the case.

But the big change will be in the
demographic make-up of the Russian Federation’s population.Three factors are driving this: First,
non-Russians and especially Muslim nations within Russia have higher birthrates
than do ethnic Russians. Second, ethnic Russian males suffer disproportionately
higher death rates among working age groups.

And third, immigration in the future
will add almost exclusively to the Muslim side of the balance.It is already the case that the share of
Muslims in Russia is far higher than the Kremlin admits especially if one
includes the 12 to 15 million gastarbeiters who are disproportionately from
Central Asia and Azerbaijan and Muslim rather than Orthodox.

(That pattern was less extreme in
the 1990s because many ethnic Russians did return from the non-Russian
countries, but now, despite Putin’s call for repatriation of compatriots, the
number of Russian or at least Orthodox immigrants is extremely small in
comparison to the number of Muslims.)

And that means, if the Russian
government is to avoid presiding over economic growth far lower or even
negative than it wants, Moscow will have to take in more immigrant workers and
these workers will leave it with a population very much less Russian and
Orthodox Christian than the Kremlin will like and stability would appear to
require.